


flowers that weep in the valley

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dubious Morality, M/M, Post-Canon, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 16:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: You can match the shape of a predator’s teeth to its kill.





	flowers that weep in the valley

**Author's Note:**

> title from [cruel brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvXUAr2Jbk8) by steeleye span
> 
> written for fe rarepair week 2019 day 1: leaves

The third winter after the Tower, Stefan finds Volke crouched in the corner of his room. He is trapped between the bed and the desk, one knife drawn, hand pressed to his bleeding stomach, drenched in sweat and his tan skin an ugly, ashen pallor. Stefan’s hand on _Vague Katti_’s hilt, he stands out of arm’s reach as Volke looks up at him with glassy, fever-bright eyes.

For a moment, he does not think Volke recognizes him.

Volke does not ask for help. He is not that kind of man.

But he lowers his baselard, and says, dry voice cracking: “How good are you at stitches?”

Stefan finds that courting Volke is not unlike taming an injured predator. There is never any question that Volke will trust him, for Stefan himself does not trust Volke. There is a difference between a wolf allowing you to pull an infected tooth and offering up your throat to it.

For more than a fortnight, Volke recuperates quietly in Stefan's shadow. His injury heals into a red weal of a scar crossing his abdomen from his left hipbone to the right side of his ribcage. Stefan knows better than to ask where he got the injury or how he found his way to Grann: to the former there’s no answer he’ll like, the second he can answer himself.

Beneath the cloth of Volke’s scarf, at the back of his neck, halfway into his hairline, there are the barely-visible wisps of a red-brown brand not unlike the shape of a wolf. Stefan does not need to see a Brand to know a blood-brother, but he appreciates it nevertheless.

One morning Volke leaves without a word. Four months later he returns, takes a room not far from Stefan in one of their few standing buildings. He pays his rent in good coinage, and does not try to haggle.

When Volke is there, he joins them in constructing new homes, stripped to a sweat-soaked undershirt that reveals his brand and no few scars, hair stuck to his forehead as he gasps for breath. When he leaves, Stefan will find bodies in the desert.

You can match the shape of a predator’s teeth to its kill.

“I thought,” Stefan says, seven years after the fall of the Tower, “That you took only one job at a time.”

Volke’s voice is muffled from where he has his pipe clenched between his teeth. “I don’t mix work and pleasure.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Volke finally looks up. There is a fleck of blood by the bridge of his nose. He raises both eyebrows. Seven years ago, when Stefan had fallen to one knee, gasping as Alondite burned his hands with a low heat not enough to sear but enough to _remind _him that it could, Volke had been the one to push the hilt back into his palms. The look on Volke's face as Stefan bit his lip to bleeding at the low boil that melted through his bones, reminding him of his _inadequacy, _was what Stefan would have called awe on any other face.

He had whispered, just loud enough for Stefan to hear, “If you fall, so will three more of us.”

Now, neither of them speak. Volke is well aware that Stefan can take care of himself. He does not need to patrol Grann and look for foolish Beorc who think them easy pickings.

“Why couldn’t Altina leave?” When Stefan does not answer, Volke takes the pipe from his mouth and knocks out the old ash. “Lehran spoke to the goddess, not her. It’s not hard to fake hearing a goddess if nobody else can. So why did Lehran have to leave?” Stefan still does not answer, for it seems that Volke already has one in mind.

Volke lights a match off of his bootheel and sets the fresh leaves to light, smoke spiraling up from the embers to wreathe his face. “You can’t build a house on rotten foundations.”

Pipesmoke curls between them.

“Find yourself a good, strong copse of trees. Chop them down, one by one. Halve them. Plank them. Plane them. Throw aside those that won’t take weight, or have rot, or infestations, or your house will fall.”

Volke meets his eyes, and it’s like staring into embers. There’s banked fury there, smoldering with a low heat as if to question why Stefan would _think _to endanger his venture. To stain his hands with more blood, to build more skeletons into his closet. To bury another body beneath the floorboards is to call into question why those boards should not be pried apart and the miasma brought to light for all to see.

No foundation holds forever. Sooner or later, stones crack. Earth gives. Lumber rots. Brick crumbles. Mortar fails. Even Laguz are not eternal.

Except, of course, for Lehran.

It is the duty of the future to repair the damages wrought by time. It is for them to pry the floorboards up and cough as dust and decay suffuses their lungs, to rip down curtains and drag the past, kicking and screaming or still with rigor, into the light. To call murder and slavery by their rightful names. To decry crimes and to spit upon horror.

It is the duty of the past to build, whatever the cost.

Stefan has poured more than his fair share of blood into the mortar that holds the stones of Grann together. The future will have no easy time leeching it free—but the present has had no shortage of trouble forcing their own ghosts properly into their graves. Daein and Begnion both even now falter and struggle beneath the weight of their bones.

“You’re too late to wipe my hands clean,” Stefan says at last, when Volke dusts the sand off of his knees and stands, pocketing the best of the pickings from his kill. He pulls his pipe from his mouth to press a kiss to Stefan’s lips: it tastes of smoke and tobacco, a sharp tang atop the roof of his mouth from the cloud on Volke’s breath. His stubble is rough and days unshaven, scraping over Stefan’s chin and the edges of his lips.

Volke does not close his eyes as they kiss. He stares into Stefan’s face, as if searching for something, too close for it to be in focus. It’s strange, to see the striations around his pupils, a bloody red against the russet of his irises, up close where they seem so large.

Volke pulls away, finishes his pipe, and puts it away. He draws his scarf back up over his face, sheathes his baselards.

“Are you not coming back?”

Volke’s eyes soften in a smile as he turns to go. For a moment, Stefan feels his voice catch in his throat: he half-lifts his hand to reach out, opens his mouth to call Volke back, to ask him to come home.

[There is no majesty in caged animals.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1038)


End file.
